7 Easy Metrics for Cannabis Marketing

So often, I see entrepreneurs trying anything and everything they can think of. We call this “throwing spaghetti at a wall”, and you’ll waste a lot of time and money trying to find something that sticks!

To effectively boost your marijuana biz from startup mode into an established industry player, it’ll take a little more effort. The area(s) of your business that need the effort will vary. But it’s always going to require you to gather specific info in order to make better, more profitable marketing decisions.

So which information do you need, and when? That’s the real question! Pay attention to these seven statistics, and nothing can stop you in moving forward.

The First Step before you can start analyzing data is you need a way to collect data.

If you haven’t already, take a minute to sign up for Google Analytics and install their tracking code on your website. It’s fast, easy, and essential for understanding all parts of your digital marketing.

If you don’t know how to do this yourself, it’s a pretty quick process for any web developer to handle!

Marketing Stats for all Marijuana Startups

Once you’ve started gathering the data, get ready to make educated decisions with it!

No matter what phase your startup is in, the same rules apply. Understanding these basic statistics can really help guide you in growing your cannabis business. Pay attention to these seven stats, and nothing can stop you in moving forward!

Unique Website Visitors

On a daily, weekly, even hourly basis, your Unique Website Visitors will tell you how many different people are viewing your website. (That’s not to be confused with Total Visitors, which will count the same person as a different visit no matter how many times they’ve viewed.)

Knowing this information will be helpful for tracking the overall success of your website. It’ll help you understand the performance of off-site campaigns, and identify “dead zone” days where cannabis marketing campaigns will perform the worst.

If you’re planning on selling advertising space on your site, the number of Unique Website Visitors will also directly relate to the value of the ad, mention, and/or link you are offering!

Bounce Rate

Your Bounce Rate tracks the percentage of visitors that leave your website quickly, without interacting with the page.

If everyone that enters your cannabis website clicks around, you will have a bounce rate of 0%. If everyone that enters your site clicks back immediately, your bounce rate will be 100%.

A high bounce rate is the first sign that there’s something very wrong with the marketability of your website. None of your visitors want to be there!

This can happen for a variety of reasons. But most commonly, it happens 1) because the wrong audience is being targeted, and 2) because of poor site layout and design. So if your bounce rate is lower than 30%, it’s a good idea to rethink the marketing strategy surrounding your website.

(It’s worth it to note that any single-page site will have a much higher bounce rate, because there is only one page to visit. For those with a landing page, I don’t recommend putting too much focus on bounce rate!)

Referral Sources

Another one of the many great stats that Google Analytics reports is your referral sources. This will help you get familiar with the websites that send you the most frequent, highest quality traffic.

This helps you know which channels are the most beneficial for SEO, so you can focus on them more. So if Facebook gets you the most traffic out of your social media pages, you can spend more time there to get the maximum benefit all around!

Alexa Ranking

Alexa.com offers the most broad, easy-to-understand overview of your website’s SEO, so I recommend paying attention!

Their system ranks every indexed site in the world from 1 to 25 million using a variety of factors. The lower your rank, the higher chance you have of being found online.

You can use these rankings to track your site’s performance over time. If one week you’re ranked 6 million and the next you’re ranked 5 million, you’re doing better!

Since you can look up any domain that exists, you can also use Alexa.com to compare your SEO to competitors.

However, since Google and the other search engines have their own algorithms for search results, be careful not to take Alexa rankings too literally. This tool should be used to follow general trends, so you can know when bigger changes and marketing boosts are needed!

You’re probably already familiar with ROI: it’s the revenue you bring in compared to the amount you spend to get it.

You should be measuring ROI on every campaign you create. Whether you’re investing time, resources, or cash, it all has a cost! You don’t have an unlimited supply of any of these things, so knowing which activities are producing the best results will let you know which campaigns to ditch, and which to double down on.

When broken down, your customer acquisition cost will tell you how much it costs to obtain a new customer. This number will be different for each individual marketing campaign, but should also be combined for one overall CAC.

Obviously, you want to keep this number as low as possible! It’s much better to spend $10 per new customer than it is to spend $100, right?

Lifetime Value (how much you’ll earn from a single customer over a lifetime)

A customer’s lifetime value is how much you’ll earn from a single customer for life. Will they buy once and never return? Will they buy your product every day, or every week?

By knowing your customers’ lifetime values, you’ll be able to help identify which promotions are valuable, and which are a waste. If the average customer buys your $10 product once and won’t need a replacement for 5 years, offering the first product free is a bad idea.

But maybe you’re selling a product at $10, and the average customer purchases every month or so. Then the lifetime value of a customer would be tens of thousands, and offering the first one free isn’t so bad!

Once you know an approximate lifetime value, compare it to every CAC to make sure that you aren’t losing money by gaining more customers!

Getting started it’s impossible to have all the info you could possibly need to make the best choices for your cannabis business every time. But these seven stats are a great place to start! And since they’re free and easy, you have no excuse not to start planning better marketing decisions today.

Bridget Renee is the SEO, Marketing, and Project Manager for Kindtyme.
Kindtyme is a top-shelf digital design for the cannabis industry. Custom websites, graphics, photography, and technology for marketing all types of marijuana businesses.